Random Lighting Using Adobe Photoshop

The key factors to make a website design look better are lighting and randomness. In this tutorial you will learn the steps of making a very nice piece of wallpaper based on random lighting. We will use Photoshop’s “Coulds” tool.

Step 1

First we will create some wavy patches. Open a new canvas, 6000 pixels wide and 4500 pixels high. With the default black and white selected, click Filter > Render > Clouds. Clouds are an excellent way to create randomness.

Turn the clouds into coloured patches, by clicking Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast. Set the Contrast to +100. You can also alter the size of the patches by changing the Brightness.

Step 2

Select about a quarter of the image and click Image > Crop. The image was made bigger to make the clouds smaller.

Click Filter > Distort > Wave. Increase the wavelength to Minimum 200, Maximum 300, and increase the maximum amplitude to 50. Randomise the waves until you’ve got a nice effect, and click OK.

Step 3

Create a new layer. Choose the gradient tool. Click on the coloured representation of the gradient. Choose Noise Gradient. Apply the gradient across the image.

Step 4

Desaturate the layer, by pressing Ctrl+Shift+U. The colours of a Noise Gradient aren’t useful here, but it’s a good source of randomised lighting when desaturated.

Change it from “Normal” to a Hard Light layer or a Linear Light layer. This noise gradient layer creates what I call “Canopy Lighting” – visible, unidirectional lighting, with a myriad of different intensities – as if it had gone through the randomising effect of a forest canopy. The problem with this lighting layer is that it doesn’t show up over the black areas.

Step 5

Go to your background layer and alter its Hue/Saturation, by pressing Ctrl+U. Tick “Colorize”. Play with the Lightness and Saturation, and select a Hue (colour). The final output will look something like the image shown below.